take look at that cute little puppy. thankfully a tow truck driver saw the puppy after leaving the scene and he actually found out who the family was and helped track down that family and brought the little boy and his puppy back together. well, eibel back at the top of the hour for "cnn sunday morning" at 8:00 a.m. eastern time. but first sanjay gupta m.d. begins right now. everywhere you look it seems a heart attack is waiting to happen. more than a million heart attacks a year. that's one just about every second in the united states. if you haven't had a heart attack yourself you likely know someone who has. i've got a secret to share, with what we know right now we could see the last heart attack. things you need to know. things your doctor may not tell you. i'm a pretty typical guy in his

early 40s with family heft of heart disease so i decided to go on a mission to never have a heart attack. but how? dr. arthur a fw otson guarantees he can see things coming years in advance. here's where the blood is flowing. >> he's look for plaque in the carrotic artery. a blockage here can cause a stroke and would be a sign i'm at increased risk for a heart attack. >> unless you do the imaging and the advanced testing, you are really playing russian roulette with your life. >> what are you looking for? >> calcium. >> i've never had a problem bus you're looking for it anyway. >> yes. and if you're heading for a heart attack in five, ten, 20 years you will have plaque. >> we all know plaque is bad.

it blocks your blood vessels. it's formed by ldl cholesterol in your cholesterol. thing of it as "l" for lousy that can accumulate slowly over time, narrowing the blood vessels raich something building up in the pipe. this narrowing can cause chest pain called an jie. >>. it can always cause a hearst attack. did you ever wonder how seem lig healthy people can have a haerlt attack? through may surprise you iner with. >> sim people. s. here ee how. cholestrol can cause unstable bubbles or blisters of plaque to form your arteriearteries. most are covered by a cap but ins uggla and stress can cause

it to rupture and block the flow of blood to the heart. robbed of oxygen the heart muscle can't function properly. heart attack. therein lies the key. we can now find the clues before heart trouble gets dangerous even before the first symptoms. >> one of the best kept see krtss in i are really seei ing . it's doable. >> you're saying with what we know right now, we don't have to have any more heart attacks in this country. >> i've never say not any but the great majority rj yes, absolutely. >> it's the greatest killer in this country. >> and it's completely correctible. the liver sends out ldl level and when everything works good

the good scarf venchs the rdl and turns it into adr. your there's troll number sa good measure of what's in the blood. here's what tale yos near it doesn't tell you. >> if you look the coronary attack units. those who don't very vest those who do are ee sep chalgly the same. >> that is essentially surprising because you'll hear people kb thank their numbers. you say you're not looking in the right place. >> these essentially useful. >> here's what does matter. the size of your ldl or bad particles. larger ones don't pose much of a there's.

it's the smaller ldls that are likely to lodge in your walls. >> i don't think anyone likes getting their blood drawn. >> turn no matter what my cholesterol number is. you'll hear about my results in just a bit. but next a controversy diet. this 66-year-old skipping surgery to try to eats her way to it. >> up in of it is treating cal sags of the e mess [ male announcer ] along with support, chantix is proven to help people quit smoking. it reduces the urge to smoke. some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix.

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and the candidate's speech is in pieces all over the district. the writer's desktop and the coordinator's phone

are working on a joke with local color. the secure cloud just received a revised intro from the strategist's tablet. and while i make my way into the venue, the candidate will be rehearsing off of his phone. [ candidate ] and thanks to every young face i see out there. [ woman ] his phone is one of his biggest supporters. [ female announcer ] with cisco at the center... working together has never worked so well. . sharon kants is 66 years old, a retired private investigator from canton, ohio. a year ago she had a heart attack after a coronary artery became completely blocked. >> he said for someone who has

what you have, the only warning you usually get is death. at that point i really knew how lucky i was. >> like a lot of woman, she did not experience the classic chest pain but rather fatigue and a pain in her jaw. and he said you're going have to have open heart surgery. he said i can fix you today, take you right down to o. rmt and operate on you right now. my son was in there and he was ready to we'll me down to the on rating room because he was frantic, you know. it ooh terrifying. >> what kints did next may surprise you. she turned the surgeon done cold. she said no to open heart surgery and decided to take a chance. >> i brought parsnips using food as medicine. >> i love these. these are my favorite. they're wonderful. >> kintz is betting her life on a controversial diet created by dr. caldwell esserstin.

>> you have adages an-on-how people can decide. >> we know what they should not eat, oil, doory, meat, fish, and chicken. what do we want them to eat? all those whole grains, cereal, bread, pasta, beans, vegetables, yellow, red, green, and fruit. what particular individualables do we want to have them have? i'm out of breath. >> nothing with a mother, nothing with a face. you can imagine the meat, egg, and dairy associations think that's a terrible idea. >> incorporated lean beef can actually help you stick to a healthy diet because it's a food you can enjoy. >> eggs are a source of 134 vitamins and minerals rm they're

the gold standard. >> dairy foods are nutrient rich. >> do be clear, he is not a cardiologist, no special degree in nutrition, but when it comes to food as medicine, he's a true believer. >> you know sharon. doctors believe she should have an intervention. is she putting her life at risk? >> no. in data going back more than 20 years. once they start eating this way, you'll make yourself heart attack-proof. >> we know that if people are eating this way, they're not going to have a heart attack. >> his food-based position puts him squarely against con investigational wisdom which says diet is only part of a heart-healthy diet. >> if you follow this diet, pretty strict die yechlt but in the exchange you're not going

have a heart attack, what would you say to that? would you agree with that? >> i wow say it's an overstatement. >> i was curious about the science behind the doctor's claims so i dug up some of these peer revere studies. in one study they had no heart attack, no coronary i vechbts of any sort after fives. >> you near not talking about just reducing your chance of heart disease. you're talking about reversing it. >> absolutely. >> the late wisdom is once you veb these blacks, they're there, you're stuck with them. try not to get worse. is that fally thinking. >> i think it's absolutely

faulty thinking. >> you see the way the blockage has almost disappeared. ? a year after her heart attack, check out these moves. with the diet, there's one question you have to ask. can she keep it up? i asked sharon kintz to meet me here in new york city. cooking at home is one thing. eating on the road is quite another. as the old saying goes, if her diet can make it here, it can make it anywhere. 46th and broadway, please. sharon, how are you? i'm going to take advice from you. when you look at the menu, what comes to your mind. >> the majority on there, i'm not going to eat. >> you're focusing on salad?

>> no. not really. i can have the baby spinach leaves minus the chicken, peaches, strawberry, forget the walnuts. >> is this as are straunlts you could eat. >> oh, yeah, you bet. if i was hungry, you bet i could. >> do you think this is going to make you live longer? >> i hope so. i hope i get to see you retire. >> i have a feeling you're going to have to live a very long time. which i hope you do. >> i hope i do too. i think, if it doesn't -- if i don't live longer, i know i'm going to live more of a quality life. >> coming up former president bill clinton opens up about his own bad heart ant his brush with deck and he tells me he's now a vegan. that's right. a vegan. twins. i didn't see them coming.

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a survey by the mernl heart association found that 407 think their hearts are in great shape. the mumbere? fewer than 1%. former president clinton can relate. he passed all his white house physicals but four years after leaving office it took a quadruple bypass to save his life. >> i was lucky i didn't die of a heart attack. >> former president clinton like too many people was busy. and for years he ignored warning signs from his heart. but in 2004 during an exhausting book tour there was something different. >> i had a real tightness in my

chest when i was getting off the airplane and it was the only time i had had it unrelated to exercise. >> we're here outside new york presbyterian hospital and in just a couple of hours president bill clinton, former president is scheduled to undergo surgery. >> so i immediately went down to our local hospital and they did a test. they said you got real problems. they hustled me down to columbia presbyterian, and they confirmed the determination that i had serious blockage and needed the surgeries. >> the doctors immediately knew. options were limited. the 58-year-old clunton needed to have his chest opened, his heart stopped, and surgery performed. >> there's no medical treatment for reversing the obstructions he had already formed in his blood vessels. >> they got hillary and chelsea there and all i remember is it happened fast and everybody who

cared about muss was scared and i felt rather serene. >> on labor day he had four blooz vessels by passed. >> starting this morning around 8:00 he had a relatively routine quadruple by pass the operating around noon, and he is recovering. >> it hurt so much that i had a hard time even watching movies much less reading. then when i started again to exercise and i forced myself out -- i mean, like the first day try to just walk a half a block. i was really trying to push myself into doing the therapy. there was that period when you're just not sure you can come back. >> did you confront your mortality? >> oh, yeah, but i lived with it -- you know, when i was in elementary school, i was

fascinated by cemeteries, and i used to walk m cemetery in the little town where i was born where my father and my grandparents are buried and my mother buried. i used to go visit and read the headstones and see when people were buried there and when they lived and how long they lived. it was different for me. i was -- i grew up knowing that i couldn't live forever. i grew up knowing that people i loved would die because my father died before i was born, so i never had the fear, the terror of my own mortality. >> how do you know you're healthy? first of all, would you call yourself healthy now? >> i think i'm healthier than i was. i lost 27 pounds, and i feel good, and i actually have, believe it or not, more energy. i seem to need -- when i do sleep, i sleep better, but i seem to need less sleep to

function at a reasonably high level than i did. >> i mean, you talked about the fact that you love to eat. >> you know, i like the stuff i eat. i like the vegetables and fruits, the beans, the stuff i eat now i like. i like it. >> do you call yourself a vegan? >> well, i suppose i am if i don't he's dairy or meat or fish. >> you cut all that out. i mean, do you -- >> the only thing -- once in a while literally in well over a year now at thanksgiving i had one bite of turkey. >> you're doing this for your health. >> yes. >> is that why you're doing this? >> absolutely. >> mr. president, how are you? >> great. >> last time we spoke a few weeks ago you said that you were going to be really strict on the diet. you were doing a pretty good job. >> i'm being more strict now. >> are you? >> uh-huh. >> by the time i have my 65th

birthday, i want to weigh what i did when went home from law school in 1973. >> wow, that's a grand am business. i like that. >> i weighed -- i got down to 185. now, i got down -- when chelsea was married, i weighed about 192, which is what i weighed when i graduated from high school. anything under 195 was my optimum weight my whole life, but in the summer of 1973 we had a scorching hot summer, and i ran lemiles a day at the hottest hour of the day, which i could do back then, medical record to make the pounds go off, and it was the first time since i was 13 years old that i had weighed 185 pounds. i want to try one more time. >> coming up, the pictures don't lie. i learn if my arteries are young or old. >> and to find out what fate has to offer me. [ woman ] ring. ring. progresso.

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>> so wt about me? i have a family history. am i heart trak proof? >> i met up with a doctor to get a full workup to gauge my likelihood of having a heart attack. >> time to find out. time to see what fate has to offer me. >> we had some good news when we did the imageing that you had no plaque in your coronary artery, that your corotids was like a spring chicken. >> someone made a comment to me that this was sort of a four-year guarantee. >> yes. >> that i won't have a heart attack? >> would you agree with that? >> i would extend it to five to seven years. >> you said based on what you have already seen five to seven years if i'm feeling chest pains it's probably not a heart attack? >> right. >> more good news. looking at my ldl, the bad cholesterol, dr. aginson tells me those are large particles, the kind that don't build up as

plaque. >> putting my whole picture together now, the imageing, all my laboratory tests, what can you tell me? >> you're at low risk for future heart attack, even though there's some family history. clearly your lifestyle, that you maintain your weight, that you do the exercise has helped to decrease your risk. >> if diet and exercise can make someone like me low risk for a heart attack, even with a strong family history, that's encouraging. >> i don't think there's any question that not only could we beat our heart attack, but the vast majority of people, even my age, if they're prepared to change their diet, exercise a little more, could actually reverse a lot of their blockage. >> it is possible to keep everybody from having a heart attack. >> with? >> education, with knowledge, with information. now, the question becomes are people going to